We are living in strange times now. I am so thankful that I normally work from my home studio and that my clients are all remote anyway. It makes it much easier to continue doing science illustration. I am still open for business, making new products, creating new artwork, and taking on new clients and projects. Life Science Studios has moved locations! I am now operating out of Bellingham, WA, in a new studio room with an inspiring view.

I have added a couple of fun new products to the shop. You may have also noticed that you can now purchase mushroom art products directly from the Life Science Studios website. I am so excited to have my own store on my website now! You can also still purchase through Etsy.

A few of my cichlid fish paintings have been published in research journal articles. I love seeing how the paintings and data work together to communicate the research findings. I have two more papers featuring my artwork coming out soon, and I can't wait to share those!

I also had a great time creating a new logo for The Hungry Forager, a new company out of Kentucky. The client wanted a logo for the website and a circular one for social media, so we came up with two fun versions. The logos show the variety of foraged foods that The Hungry Forager will be selling.

I hope you all are safe and healthy and staying home.

There are tons of ongoing projects happening at Life Science Studios. My to do list of paintings was 63 at the end of January and has now shrunk to 29. Whew! Here is an update on a few of those projects:

I am getting so close to finishing paintings of all of the cichlid fish species of Lake Tanganyika, and there are a lot of them! This week, I spent some time working on sketches of fish for which we have very little (sometimes zero) reference images or information. It's tricky, but having done hundreds of these fish already, I have become pretty good at interpreting how a fish should look, even based on a poorly preserved specimen or blurry photo. I'm looking forward to painting a few of these sketches next week.

This week, I painted a number of mobulid (manta and devil) ray species for a client at UC Santa Cruz who studies these beautiful creatures. These paintings have been so fun to do, and a bit difficult because of the subtle shading and markings on some of them. I am looking forward to seeing my client use these in her work, and I think they will do a lot to enhance her message.

Bees have a very special place in my heart, so I am excited to be working on two different bee projects! One of them is for interpretive panels here at Princeton University campus and the other is for an upcoming scientific paper. The interpretive panels will be created using watercolors, while the journal figure is done entirely digitally. 

Life Science Studios has a new collaboration! I have been painting tons of new mushroom species for this project, and this Sunday, I will have a big announcement about the launch of Mycomestible. Stay tuned!